Why are the Services pushing college so hard to the exclusion of vocational education?

No argument and congrats on your bootstrap effort. Did you not have Post 9/11 GI Bill to help? Also, I am not putting down college (I have 3 degrees), just amazed that it seems to be the only option being given to young soldiers today at the transition point.

I believe they are biased towards college. In my humble opinion, the smartest thing to try to get these days is the VA peer support training. If that can get paid for, the veteran can get hired as a peer support counselor as a GS-7 instead of waiting for an apprentice slot (GS-5) and having to hold it for a year. It only takes a couple weeks, but out of pocket costs are about $1,500. I believe colleges have a leg up because they know what the VA is willing to pay and when they come in under price, they push that agenda.

As you say, SFC Merino, "fire in the belly" goes a long way in overcoming problems.  On leader in the Civil War, with only one bullet in his pistol, lead the charge "down the hill" toward their enemy who outgunned them and the enemy turned tail and ran and this officer won the battle!  I know that with current weapons the enemy might mow them down or blow them up but I have respect for courage that isn't misplaced.

That's crazy.

Yes but that is the market and projections say it will stay that way for IT folks for at least a decade. That is why I do not understand why the Services are not pushing more transitioning members into votech

SFC Doug Lee , I will go further and state that most business degrees appear to actually be harmful (other than for listing on the resume). They give the individual the false impression that they actually know something that will be relevant when they hit the job market. Unfortunately, they tend to teach what the instructors think is sexy. As a practical matter, this means they prepare you for what they think[1] C-level executives are doing. And, on average, it will be a long time - or never - before the grad gets to that level.

Using me for an example (MS in Management & MBA), I learned all about international trade, running a major unit of an international corporation, the fine points of corporate & employment law, statistical modeling, marketing & advertising theory, etc. I HAVE used much from these classes in my management career. However, what they didn't even address was: Giving feedback, doing performance reviews, time management, meeting behavior, negotiations within the organization, preparing for and surviving re-orgs, hiring, firing, determining who to promote, succession planning, on boarding employees, starting and ending projects, etc. I could literally go on for pages on the important topics that are just never brought up.

The state of business "education" is a joke. Quite honestly, most of my relevant education came from three sources:
1. The Army (you need to translate, but the Army DOES teach relevant leadership & management skills - see also the recent discussion of leader books)
2. Podcasts
3. Prior jobs (mostly due to looking at what those managers did and what didn't work)

[1] While not denigrating the work that goes in to getting a PHD or DBA, it is worth noting that most B-school instructors have been academics for most of their lives. If they have worked in the "real" world, it was most often as a consultant, giving advice & lectures, not in a position where they were actually responsible for actual performance. In spite of what I wrote above, I feel that both of my Master's degrees were above average in professional relevance because the college (UMUC) exclusively used adjunct professors who were also currently engaged in relevant professional activities (my law prof was a practicing corporate lawyer in Houston, my marketing prof ran a marketing firm down south, etc). Based on my discussions with peers, both of online and brick schools, what I got was better than what most of them did.

the old saying seems to remain true. The "A" students became the teachers, The "B" became the employees working for the "C" students.